The present invention generally relates to the special receptacle or package and specifically the handling media means; cassette, carrier, basket, tray for handling the electrical/electronics materials in the process of the fabrication.
Moving wafers materials, in the semiconductor industry, safely and speedily during the integrated circuits fabrication is important. Today most of the transportation processes of the devices are done by the cassette which holds commonly 25 wafers. After the wafers have been processed at the one processing equipment, a worker carriers the output cassette to the next station for the next process. (The cassette to cassette flow in the transportation reduces the contamination, damage and breakage of the wafers.) However, the conventional cassette has no means to distinguish the status in the process for the wafers which it holds.
The color coding cassette of the present invention is dealing with the semiconductor materials transport circumstances. There is a need for a new type of cassette to improve the fabrication process and to open the new dimension in the wafer transport. The following are the typical circumstances in the semiconductor industries: (1) During the breakdown period of the automatic processing system, i.e., systems equipped with in-line wafer transport, the color coding cassette of the present invention substitutes the automatic materials handling equipment. (2) The high technology products require periodic process changes and the semiautomated cassette to cassette approach for transferring the materials, i.e., individual process module, is more suitable. The color coding cassette of the present invention can be utilized in the variety of applications. (See summary of invention.) (3) The automatic materials transport as the bus to transport many of the cassettes of materials among the processing areas in the fablication, for example the Auto-Carrier, being used by the Mitsubishi Electric, the color coded cassette is very useful in handling, sorting, delivering the correct cassette to the correct processing area. (4) The automatic wafer transport such as the modular transport system made by Varian Associates, where the modules are interconnected to provide a network of the processing rooms for transporting the cassettes. The color coding technology on the cassette with the application of computer to automate the wafer transportation system is useful and important. No other prior development in the field of wafer transport has been done.